We are sponsoring the second Founders & Funders event in Toronto.  The first one was a major success.

“Founders & Funders is a private, invite only social event. Founders and Funders is dedicated: to helping Canadian entrepreneurs to meet each other; meet potential funders: angel, VC or other money sources; to have fun; and see how we can help each other create the NEXT BIG successful company.”

More about Founders & Funders can be found here.

This is a GREAT idea.  As someone who once paid for this kind of service, I can tell you that the “professional” data services are expensive and I really never thought they provided value for the money.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think paying for this kind of service is a bad idea – but if you can build a community powered service that basically does the same thing, go for it!  I’d also agree with the founders that this kind of data is vital to keeping Canada’s startup community healthy.

Read all about it at Startupnorth:

"Tonight at StartupCamp Toronto we are launching Startupindex.ca, an open, community-managed and free startup tracking database for the Canadian startup community. This is Version 1, and we will be putting a lot of work in to it in the next few weeks and months.”

Ray Ozzie talks Mesh - http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=399578#399578

Also:

The Canadian Strategic Architect Forum is underway in Vancouver.  We have a great turnout and the content has been exceptional so far.

We have been recording the sessions and day 1 is already available via the Live Silverlight Streaming Service.

Check it out:

Keynote - Norm Judah

Keynote - Richard Cleaver

Keynote - Stephen Ibaraki

Windows Server 2008 as a SOA Platform – David Remmer

Realizing Dynamic Systems – David Remmer

How to Manage Virtualized Environments using System Center – Damir Bersinic

Improving the End User Computing Experience at Bombardier – Alain Paquette

Core Infrastructure Optimization – Damir Bersinic

Building Business Intelligence Using the Microsoft Platform – Kristina Kerr

Building an Agile IT - The CN Way – Plamen Hristov

BPIO Service Line – Bart Bischoff

I am in Vancouver this week for the Canadian Strategic Architect Forum.  This is an annual event we run to bring together the key Architects from our customers and partners in Canada.  The event facilitates a sharing of ideas and a conversation about the future of Enterprise technology. 

This is the 5th year in a row we have run the event and it has become one of my favourites.  I will be playing the role of host and we have a great line-up of speakers.

I will try to blog a bit over the course of the event to let you know about some of the things coming out of CSAF.